Mehdi Hasan’s arguments against Israel’s right to exist fall flat

The widely followed journalist Mehdi Hasan promotes himself as a great debater, who can, as he titled his book, “Win Every Argument.” In a video posted last week, he aimed his purportedly sure-fire technique at Israel, promising to “debunk” what he calls the “bulls— argument” that Israel has a right to exist.

Hasan, a former host on MSNBC and other platforms, and founder of the media company Zeteo, proposes three counterarguments, which range from contrived, to phony, to self-contradictory. Worse, he never confronts the consequence of denying Israel’s right to exist, which would threaten the displacement or death of half the world’s Jewish population. 

Hasan’s first rejoinder raises a question: “Right to exist … Where?” According to Hasan, “Israel is the only country in the world that refuses to define its borders.” That is both untrue and irrelevant. It was Israel’s adversaries who first refused to define the borders. Five Arab nations invaded the nascent Jewish state within hours of Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence. The subsequent armistice agreements included only “demarcation” or cease-fire lines, which Arab states refused to recognize as actual borders.

Moreover, there are many states with unsettled borders. As Hasan surely knows, India and Pakistan are separated in Kashmir by a “line of control,” which neither nation recognizes as its own border. In the Himalayas, India has another border dispute with China, with separation also marked only by a line of control.

But in any case, what difference does “where” make? The uncertainty of Israel’s borders — in part due to historical........

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